


No Ordinary Cybertronian

by Monopteros



Category: Transformers: Prime
Genre: Alternate Universe - Creatures & Monsters, Alternate Universe - Supernatural Elements, Awkward Tension, Blood Magic, Canon-Typical Violence, Corruption, Other, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Pre-War, Telepathy, the road to hell is paved with good intentions
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-30
Updated: 2020-07-30
Packaged: 2021-03-06 01:13:42
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,148
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25604887
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Monopteros/pseuds/Monopteros
Summary: Prowl's insistence on stirring up trouble in his department gets him a ticket to Cybertron's Underworld, where dangerous creatures roam freely and death is sure to find him.When it does, the price of surviving the encounter may be one Prowl is not prepared to pay...
Comments: 11
Kudos: 19





	No Ordinary Cybertronian

Cybertron lost something after the Council made arrangements for the Well to be thoroughly monitored for new sparks getting ready to break free. No longer were they forced to explore and fight their way out. Instead, bands of guardians bridged them to safety in one of several above-ground complexes, where they received what would be their lifelong assignments, any necessary data packs, and—if they were lucky—designations.

Time passed, as time is known to do. Mechs created before this decision deactivated on the job, starved in alleys, or wore down from sheer age, their burned out sparks no longer able to power even the most delicate frames. As a result, most of what they knew about the Underworld—vital passageways, secret stashes, tricks for survival in circumstances simply not found elsewhere—slipped through the public's fingers and vanished. Much of this data had become obsolete, of course, spoiled by the constant natural shifts taking place in Cybertron's depths, but those who knew it'd existed mourned its loss anyway. These were lessons paid for with pain and energon.

What did _not_ fade so easily were the rumors of the terrible creatures thriving in Cybertron's depths. Everyone readily devoured and spread the few details already known, and every new tale told by Well guardians and bridge technicians who'd had the misfortune of encountering one of the horrors and the luck to survive the meeting added to the stockpile.

Everyone had their favorites. Some talked of bizarrely mutated forms of Insecticon life spawning and filling vast caverns with grotesque crawlers. Others were fascinated by the mindless, nigh unstoppable threat of the shambling sparkeaters who could peel open a victim's chest plates with a mere thought. Strangely colored puddles seized the feet of the unwary and crawled up their frames from below, consuming them, replicating their appearance, and assuming control of their lives. Oozing beasts drilled tunnel traps beneath the surface and lay in wait for the unwary, who would walk straight into their maws without ever realizing it. The stories went on and on.

Prowl had no idea which one would be responsible for his death, but he felt certain he wouldn't like it, whatever it was.

One hand scraped along the damp, scummy surface of the rough metal serving as one of the walls of the passage he'd been walking for the last groon or so, helping to keep him oriented even as the path twisted and turned. He had no idea where he'd started out—that was the trouble with being forcibly offlined, kidnapped, and relocated—but his tracking programs provided a sense of where he'd been. If nothing else, it offered him _some_ tiny level of comfort. Someone might eventually find enough of his head left uneaten and pull out the memory of what'd happened to him.

 _Not that it would make much of a difference if they did know,_ he thought bitterly. Barricade and his buddies hadn't been punished for _any_ of the misconduct Prowl reported, and the reporting itself didn't endear him to anyone else in his department. (Obviously.) Knowing his 'colleagues', they'd barely bother remarking on it if he stopped showing up for work. He couldn't imagine news of his death would inspire any stronger a reaction.

Prowl paused, staring at the ceiling that was probably just as disgusting and filthy as the walls, and scolded himself. He knew better than to make unnecessarily uncharitable assumptions.

There'd definitely be a party down at the local bar.

He vented, dragged his free hand down his faceplate, and kept moving. It would be quicker if he could at least see where he was going and didn't have to test the ground at every step, but he had no idea how long he'd be stuck down there, and there was no guarantee he would find energon. He'd already been at half fueled status when Barricade and the others ambushed him; wasting energy on using his headlights seemed unwise.

Besides, access to a natural source of light wasn't exactly a feature common to the Underworld. Turning them on risked accidentally luring over every unholy monster with a taste for doors. Bad enough to have the few visible biolights he did.

The wall eventually cut off, as it had done so many times before, forming a corner for him to round. These were always unnerving; they forced him to take more risks, hiding potential foes or unstable conditions. If something approached him head on, he'd find out all at once, and it'd probably be over pretty quick—but if he reached around the wall and put his hand on the snout of some beast, he'd be forced to abandon caution and run, all while trying not to bleed out or leave a trail for it to follow. Even if he made a successful escape, rust (or something worse) would no doubt set in pretty quickly down here.

Prowl stilled his fans, deactivated his visor, and inched his fingers around the edge. To the wrist, the elbow, the shoulder—

His frame remained intact.

He pulled his arm back and, turning, sank against the wall, ignoring the sludge doing so smeared on his light bar. This was too damned stressful. How had so many fresh newbuilds managed to keep this up for solar cycles? Or worse, _deca-cycles?_ Here he was, a mech trained to handle intense situations and boasting vorns upon vorns of job experience dealing with places that would make most mechs purge their tanks in nervousness or disgust, and just two groons of this had already convinced him that he never wanted to come down to these levels again.

Prowl pushed away from the wall—he told himself the wobble in his left leg was due to uneven footing and not the anxiety slowly creeping through his lines—reactivated his visor, and began shuffling around the corner.

Maybe it was because they didn't know any better. He'd heard as many of the stories about the things down here as anyone else in the cities above; his imagination took the darkness and filled it with every manner of awful creation. The most a newbuild knew to expect was a couple of batchmates, and only if those had happened to pop up with them.

For once, Prowl had to admit that ignorance really was bliss.

As if punishing him for doing so, the seemingly solid ground beneath him creaked, caved, and crumbled before he could finish registering that it had made a noise. Prowl fell, and fell, and just when he felt certain he had to be running out of open air, kept falling.

Then he landed, and everything slipped away from him.

📝

For the first few moments after coming back online, Prowl felt his systems stall in response to what appeared to be the existence of an endless void. A quick check on the status of his visor showed that it was still functioning as intended; he confirmed it by lifting a hand and looking at the faint blue light on his forearm.

...Right. Not a void. Just a deeper part of the Underworld and a heavily reduced chance that he would make it back to the surface. No big deal.

He sat up, trying to arrange himself into a more stable position, and immediately bit back what would've been a pained shout, mouth clamping shut, biolights flaring. Static and shards of glass raced up one leg and toward his visor, exploding into brilliant flecks of light on arrival. He had no idea what he did to it—reaching down to touch it, he couldn't feel any energon leaks or parts sticking out of places they didn't belong—but whatever it was, it wasn't good.

No chance of calling for help either. As far down as he now was, his comm had gone from scraping up a spotty second of almost-signal every once in a while to total silence.

Venting harshly, Prowl hunched forward and covered his face with his hands. This was so _stupid._ He was going to die down here, lost and broken and alone, just because Barricade didn't want to give up getting an extra fifty shanix a decacycle from that one tire shop. That was the going rate for his life? Really? Barricade couldn't even pay off his damn bar tab with that.

He took another deep pull of the dusty, stale air around him, held it until his temperature readings flicked up a degree, and let it go again with measured slowness. No time for frustration down here. He knew better. Frustration clouded thoughts and ate up precious time. He had to find a way to get out, to get walking again. Better to go slowly than not at all. Maybe there was some kind of pipe he could pull out of the floor nearby? Or some cabling; he could use that with his batons and create a makeshift brace. Any sort of support would do right now; he had no room to be picky.

One more vent, and Prowl nodded to himself. Yes. Things were always better when he had a good plan to follow.

He dropped his arms, leaned onto his good side, and began to grope around for materials, one wrist held just above the ground like a weak lamp while the other hand scrabbled and picked at everything it could reach.

His spark wobbled in its chamber when the very edges of his fingertips brushed against something long and tubular. _Finally,_ a stroke of good luck.

Prowl planted his hands on the ground and, grunting, pulled himself closer to it. Another jolt of pain shot up his side; he grit his dentae and ignored it, seizing hold of the cable. It was thicker than he would've liked, but he wasn't about to complain; he'd figure something out once he got hold of enough of it—which wasn't hard to do, as there was so much of it. Torn loose at one end during his fall, perhaps?

It didn't matter. He wound it in loosely dangling loops around one arm, counting off the length he'd need for his leg. After considering the possibility that he might end up needing more, Prowl added several more just in case and pulled his blaster out of his thigh compartment. He thumbed the safety off and pointed the blaster's muzzle at the cable. 

He didn't get a chance to shoot. Long, scraping claws seized the weapon and ripped it out of his grip as indigo lights abruptly flared to life at the end of the cable nearest his shoulder, spiraling around his arm and shooting off into the darkness.

Prowl's visor went pale yellow with terror. Every circuit in his frame screamed for him to get up and run, injury be damned; but none of his limbs obeyed, locking up and trapping him in place. Coolant flooded his lines in anticipation of the surge of heat his wildly spinning spark and sharply clamped armor was about to produce.

He had never in his life felt colder than he did in that moment.

The racing lights finally stopped, having reached the end of the cable.

Then, without warning, they spread outward, rapidly forming a network of lines half-hidden by dimly illuminated plates of armor and pooling into a glowing circle near the very top. Above it, six red rings flickered online—and immediately focused themselves directly on his visor.

Prowl did the only thing he could think of: he flashed his high beams at them.

The dull blue _thing_ vaguely resembling an emaciated Cybertronian—if a Cybertronian could be so elegantly constructed out of nothing but knives and neon—ducked its head behind one flat shoulder, using it as a shield, and hissed at him. Prowl had processed a couple of self-proclaimed mech-eaters in his time, but their sharpened dentae had nothing on what the being in front of him possessed; for a long and terrible klik, he found himself unable to do anything but stare dumbly at what he could see of its maw.

Prowl snapped the high beams off again. If it was going to eat him, he didn't want to see it happen.

Another string of lights slithered out of the opposite side of the thing's chest and across the floor. His fans stopped dead as it began to wrap around his middle—once, twice, a third time—and then lifted him into the air. (His fingers curled into fists; the movement had jostled his leg yet again.) In the dark, he could hear nothing except the rushing of his own energon, the surprisingly light steps of the monster as it made its way toward him, and his own thoughts screaming at him for not having gone out armed with more than a single blaster that night.

It drew near enough that his own visor lit up its face once more.

His vocalizer crackled of its own accord, producing nothing but a burst of weak static.

Its gaze dropped to his mouth. It lingered there for a bit before moving up to his chevron, down to his wrists, and back up. (He wondered what it was looking for, if it could even see—a weak joint to tear? The easiest place to access a major fuel line?) Then it turned its head to the side in an oddly Cybertronian manner, narrowing its optics at him.

A half dozen different voices he couldn't recognize flooded his thoughts from the inside, ever so slightly out of sync. Rasping, delicate, flat, angry, musical, mechanical—trying to process them all at once made him feel as if someone had released a flock of lilleths inside his head. He clapped both hands over his audio receptors and deactivated them, but still the words echoed.

_What reason, presence?_

"...What?" Prowl croaked.

It turned its head in the other direction. _New life: protected. Countless millennia unseen. What reason, presence now?_ It had a strange way of speaking, but Prowl could still recognize the base language; he was fluent in it himself.

He had to be going out of his mind. He'd never heard of an Underworld terror that could talk like a mech, let alone be inside someone's head.

 _Always first time,_ it replied. Something close to a dark sense of humor rustled just beneath the comment, restless.

Prowl thought it a good thing the monster was holding him up in the air, because if he'd been standing just then, he would've had to sit down from the shock. Evidently, it wasn't just able to talk inside his head. It could _hear_ inside, too.

He decided to respond. If he wasn't losing his grip on reality, ignoring its questions could be dangerous. If he was, he might as well answer anyway. It wouldn't make much difference.

"I—uh. I fell," he said, pointing upward. "Someone brought me down here. They left me." Prowl frowned at his own words. Of course they'd left him. He wouldn't be there if they hadn't, would he? "I didn't want to be here."

_Intention: leave?_

"Yes. I have to get back to the surface."

Its lips curled upward at the corners as it tugged him another few inches forward. _So certain? Company welcomed._

"I am," he replied, a little more hastily than he'd intended, but not enough to regret. The more firmly it understood his position, the better. "I belong up there. Not down here, waiting to be eaten by something."

The smile grew a bit bigger at that last part. He tried not to stare at its mouth again. (He failed.)

When it didn't offer up a reply, he attempted to fill the silence a different way. That seemed more helpful than staying quiet—or at least, more comfortable. "You can speak. Where do you come from? How did you end up down here?"

 _Everywhere,_ it said, raising a hand and making a small sweeping motion with the fingers to indicate the room around them—and by extension, the world. He could barely see the movement in front of its biolights. _Nowhere. Present whenever, wherever great need: overheard._

Prowl had no idea what to make of that answer, other than to find it mildly unsettling. In its own odd fashion, it had told him everything he really needed to know and then some, but that didn't give him any more of an idea about what it was or where it had learned to talk. Somehow, he thought that was the point.

"All right," he said, nodding. He wasn't exactly in a position to demand more from the—was it rude to think of it as a monster? It wasn't a mindless, feral beast snuffling around in the dark for another meal, after all; he was dangling there having a conversation with it. Surely it qualified for 'sentient being' status and basic courtesies, if nothing else? It couldn't make things any worse to try finding out. "Do you have a designation?"

It tilted its head, blinking slowly, smile fading just a touch. Prowl felt a small jolt of surprise at the reaction. Had it really not expected to be asked that?

 _Designation never needed._ The sharp tip of a tongue slipped out to pass across its lips while it considered the question further. He found himself tracking the movement more intently than was strictly necessary and shook his head. Unfortunately, the action failed to clear his thoughts, as it wasn't done interrupting them. _Concept: intriguing. Prowl granted permission to assign name._

He opened his mouth to ask how it knew his name if he'd never mentioned it, and then reminded himself that it was telepathic and shut it—only to open it once more as a suitable option leaped to mind, prompted by the voices that'd been crowding together inside his head for the last while. "Soundwave? You're, ah... very noisy. Is that all right?"

It seemed to become unfocused, optics no longer all fixed on the same point and the cable holding him captive in midair drooping a few inches lower. Its mouth moved, mimicking the word, but it did not speak. Prowl kept quiet, figuring it was testing the feeling of its would-be new name; accepting one for the first time probably meant a great deal to it. There were plenty of Cybertronians who didn't have one of their own, and judging from a small scattering of conversations he'd heard first- and secondhand, they would've done just about anything to be given one.

Getting asked to decide whether they liked the one they got? That was a right _no_ Cybertronian possessed—yet there he was, granting it to this unknown being in front of him. If anyone on the High Council found out about this, they'd drop dead of horror on the spot.

That was their problem, Prowl decided. Not his.

Refocusing, it fixed his gaze on his neck; he held himself as motionless as possible, hoping it hadn't taken the name or the reasoning behind it as an insult. It leaned forward, pressing its face to his throat cabling, jaws opened just wide enough to bite and tear—

And instead, inhaled his scent, fangs barely grazing over sensitive metal as it lifted him higher and pulled away again, pinpricks of not-quite-pain burning under the warm vent that came after. A heavy feeling of hunger and satisfaction twisted together rolled off Soundwave's frame, rippling through Prowl's mind alongside a soft chorus of _Affirmative_ and spreading downward, sparking at his fingertips so strongly he was surprised he couldn't actually see little flickers of light. He shivered, and whether it was out of fear or something else, he couldn't have said just then. He wasn't entirely sure he even wanted to know.

 _Prowl's spark: beautiful, bright,_ Soundwave told him, now staring at his hood like it could see through to what lay beneath. Prowl wasn't convinced it couldn't. _Prowl: idealistic, stubborn. Different. Precious rarity. Soundwave enjoys._ A quick pulse of contentment hit him just after the use of its new name. Soundwave glanced up again, now gazing into his visor. _Reward offered. Contained within Prowl's spark: countless desires. Choose one. Soundwave accommodates._

Prowl couldn't help himself. He laughed, more out of nervousness than anything else, and looked away. Something about Soundwave's gaze felt more intense than it had before. It was as if someone had secretly hollowed out Prowl's plates and filled them with microscopic scraplets; they burned and crawled and hummed, and he thought they might've crumbled to dust in another moment if he'd kept looking.

"Assuming I believe you," he said, mostly because he hated how much he already did, "what would I owe you for your assistance?"

 _Price: dependent upon task,_ Soundwave replied. It used one spindly finger to gently push his face back toward it, encouraging him to stare into its optics. Prowl didn't fight the movement. The red rings dimmed and Soundwave's fingertip kept moving, gently tracing his jawline before pressing against Prowl's lips as if requesting silence. _If price: too high, Prowl declines; offense not taken. Soundwave departs. Acceptable?_

Prowl nodded.

 _Acknowledged,_ it said, dropping its hand. _Speak._

He didn't even have to think about it. The words tumbled out of his mouth as if they were trying to recreate his earlier fall. "I'm sick of being unable to _do my job._ Cybertron is... it's broken. It's been corrupted at every level, and it needs to be cleaned up. I want to _protect_ everyone, not to—not to be like Barricade. I want to leave behind a planet that will be safe for those who come after me."

 _Ambitious._ Soundwave said nothing else for a klik or two, merely watching while Prowl rubbed at the sides of his head in frustration at his many failures regarding that subject. Then it went on, sounding quieter than it had before. Cautious, almost. _Prowl: certain smaller request not preferable?_

Prowl shook his head. "It's all I've ever wanted. I'd give anything to make it happen. But—" And now his voice picked up a hint of the anger he hadn't managed to massage out of his temples— "I haven't even put a _dent_ in things," he said, curling his hands into fists. "If wouldn't be here if I had."

Soundwave had listened in silence, absorbing Prowl's commentary and turning the statements over in its head; he felt the wordless echoes of its contemplation pulsing against his consciousness. Now, straightening its back and puffing out its armor—Prowl heard something slide out behind it, but had no idea what that might've been—it curled a finger under his chin and forced him to meet its optics. The time for teasing and toying with Prowl was over; its voices were strong and clear, though not demanding, leaving no room to doubt that Soundwave was being deadly serious.

 _Price: Prowl's spark,_ it declared. _All others refused interference during timespan: Prowl's life. Touch, harm, theft: forbidden; Prowl: Soundwave's. Payment collected when Prowl's desire: fulfilled. After agreement, permanent pact status: unbreakable._

"You don't ask much," Prowl mumbled.

It ignored the comment. _Soundwave's terms: acceptable?_

"What proof do I have that you can help me?" That was a lot to ask when Prowl wasn't even sure how Soundwave would accomplish the task. "I've worked on this my entire life and gotten nowhere. What makes you different?"

The smile returned. This time, however, it looked different. This time, splitting Soundwave's face in two and paired with brilliantly shining, hungry optics; fully exposed fangs; and a dark, grating, metallic laugh that grew in volume—Prowl hadn't realized it _could_ laugh, and almost wished he hadn't found out—it was the smile of a pneumalion that'd been asked by a glitchmouse whether it knew how to hunt.

If trying to process how the strange being spoke was trouble, what it did next was pure hell. Despite being far enough below the surface that Prowl's comms had stopped working, voice after voice poured into his head in an unbearable tangle dozens strong, all competing to be the one he picked out for longer than a second or two at a time.

_—said to him, I said, Ironhide, you can't just—seen my light pen, I had it over—recharge will do some good after that fright—don't know if I like the taste of it—get your stupid aft away from that—do anything, please, I'm begging—can't handle your high grade?—funniest thing happened in Polyhex—tank hurts, I'm so hungry—over the sweet and silver hills, I lost my—constituents don't know won't hurt them, Sigil—pass me the gallium vial—are you fragging kidding me, five hundred shanix for—let whatever's down there teach him a lesson—ten kliks until break time—make it stop, make it stop, Primus, please, make it stop—_

_"Make it stop,"_ he gasped, clutching his head, visor flickering wildly. His fans roared at full speed, but even that couldn't cool his systems; his biolights were nearly white with the strain of dumping the excess heat, and condensation clung to his plates. His voice crackled and glitched as he begged. _"Please,_ no more, I—I can't understand—"

They vanished as quickly as they'd hit him. Prowl could barely think, let alone remember how his own frame worked; were it not for the cable holding him up, he would have collapsed flat on the ground. Soundwave tilted him backward and loosened the loops a bit, letting more air reach his core.

Prowl had no idea how long the telepathic onslaught had lasted, and only a slightly firmer sense of how long it took him to clear out the last of the clogs in his processors. It felt like he'd been at it for days, although his chronometer said otherwise. If nothing else, the stunt had burned up a great deal of his remaining fuel; he'd dropped to just below a quarter tank.

 _Apologies,_ Soundwave said, having noted the growing clarity in his expression. Prowl never thought he'd be so happy to only hear six voices at once. _Prowl asked._

"I did," he mumbled, nodding. The movement made his head throb; groaning, he opted to return to being still. "Trust me, you made your point." Over the course of their conversation, Prowl had nearly forgotten that Soundwave wasn't an ordinary Cybertronian like him. He'd knew he'd never be able to make that mistake again. "Was that—I thought I heard Barricade."

 _Barricade brags,_ Soundwave said, confirming his suspicions. _Barricade's mouth: large, uncontrolled. Distasteful._

Prowl grimaced. What he wouldn't do to be able to shut that mech up for once.

_Decision reached?_

He considered the question. He could only investigate corruption once he figured out where to start digging, and that wasn't exactly easy to do. Covered tracks, data he couldn't access, accomplices—there were all sorts of road blocks making it impossible to tell where to begin and even more preventing him from working out who would help him and who would only hinder the process to further their own interests. With Soundwave's assistance, he could skip past at _least_ half the struggle and take the best possible shots at bringing down dirty mechs every time.

On the other hand, doing it this way was like cheating, wasn't it? Not to mention that it would be a violation of everyone's privacy on a scale previously undreamed of. He would, himself, be doing a terrible thing. Worse, he'd be dragging this strange and powerful being into his wickedness, and even it had seemed to think he might want to reconsider his request.

But when he thought about the good he'd do—when he thought about what Cybertron could be if Soundwave kept its promise and helped him change things for the better—he couldn't help but wonder if that didn't outweigh the bad choices. It wasn't like he was being selfish, the way so many others were; he didn't care if he kept the same job his whole life, or if he didn't get one shanix richer for his troubles, or if he never moved up from little apartment in Praxus. What mattered was that he could stay on track and make life better for others. Even if it meant destroying himself, wouldn't that be worth it?

He'd already agreed to put his spark on the line every day trying to accomplish that goal, whether it agreed with those of his colleagues and supervisors or not. If the reasoning and the intended outcome matched, what difference did knowing when he'd lose it make?

Of course, there was another possibility, Prowl thought, pressing a palm to his neck and remembering Soundwave's investigation of the cables. The terms had said that it would not allow anyone else to interfere with him, and specifically mentioned 'touch' as one form of interference. It'd said nothing about killing him, and judging by the compliments and the oddly affectionate touches, it seemed to have taken a liking to him. Death might not be what it had in mind for him.

Potentially agreeing to become the companion of one of the Underworld's many terrors was so far off the course he'd expected his life to take that he'd never even considered it. If the being in front of him had been anything else, he still wouldn't.

That wasn't the case. It wasn't a Cybertronian—at least, he didn't think so. Just to be sure, he glanced over to Soundwave while focusing on the idea. Prowl received a clear _Negative,_ for which he was grateful—but it was as close to one as he could imagine—more so than the Insecticons, who only occasionally broke away from the restricting nature of their hive mind—so it seemed to him that there were worse fates.

...And he _did_ have to admit that it was as optic-catching as it was terrifying. Not to mention rather intelligent, especially if it could process all of those voices at once. There was a good chance he'd learn to enjoy his fate.

Yes. He could cope with either outcome of the agreement. If he had to give himself up to create a better existence for others, whatever that meant, he would do it.

He straightened up as best he could, looked it in the optics, and nodded. "I agree."

Soundwave held out a hand. Prowl offered one of his own in return. The blade that crossed it was so sharp he didn't feel the pain of the cut until he saw the energon leaking out of his palm, glowing a vibrant blue in the dark. Spindly fingers closed his into a fist, smearing the energon across his hand; when it was sufficiently coated, they coaxed it open again.

Taking hold of his wrist, Soundwave pressed his hand to the bright pool of light on its chest—the energon sizzled on contact; Prowl couldn't help flinching at the acrid smell—and then let go.

_Acknowledged._

**Author's Note:**

> The back half of this fic is more or less outlined, but I haven't started writing it yet, so expect part two to take a little while to appear. Not sure how many words it'll be; could be shorter, could be longer.
> 
> Soundwave being darkly playful in this first part is based on the canon version making snappier comments in the Aligned books and a few signs that he has a nasty sense of humor in Prime. Soundwave will drift closer to the silent, more serious version in the next part. Play is play, but when Soundwave has work to do, he's all business.


End file.
